Hurricane Florence Poses Major Threat to U.S. Southeast Coastline

The Category 4 hurricane could be the strongest to hit the Carolinas since Hugo in 1989

NORFOLK, Va.—The threat from Hurricane Florence rose as the storm swelled in size over the Atlantic, and officials in the Carolinas and Virginia prepared for a disaster that could knock out power for weeks.

More than 1 million people were ordered to evacuate, and the Navy moved dozens of warships out to sea from ports in Virginia.

The Category...

NORFOLK, Va.—The threat from Hurricane Florence rose as the storm swelled in size over the Atlantic, and officials in the Carolinas and Virginia prepared for a disaster that could knock out power for weeks.

More than 1 million people were ordered to evacuate, and the Navy moved dozens of warships out to sea from ports in Virginia.

The Category 4 storm is forecast to begin lashing the coast with tropical-storm force winds Thursday and is likely to make landfall sometime Friday. The exact path and timing of the storm can change.

Early Wednesday, it was located about 575 miles southeast of Cape Fear, N.C., with maximum sustained winds of 130 miles an hour.

Of particular concern is flooding and storm surge with waters forecast to rise as much as 13 feet above ground if the storm surge coincides with high tide. Rainfall of up to 35 inches is expected in some places.

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The Port of Virginia in Norfolk, the third-largest container port on the East Coast, had planned to close down at midnight Tuesday. The port, which handled 2.8 million containers last year, mainly takes in Asian imports of clothes, electronics, home appliances and auto parts. Outgoing cargo includes logs, chemicals and grains like soybeans.

President Trump, speaking in the Oval Office following a briefing by Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Brock Long and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, said the federal government is “absolutely, totally prepared” and would spare no expense.

“It’s tremendously big and tremendously wet,” Mr. Trump said of the storm. “They haven’t seen anything like what’s coming at us in 25 to 30 years, maybe ever.”

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said Tuesday that Florence could be a “once-in-a-lifetime” storm and people shouldn’t try to ride it out.

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Public-works crews throughout the region moved vehicles to higher ground, while utilities readied workers from other states for an expected restoration effort.

The Navy continued Tuesday to move its ships away from coastal Virginia bases to keep them out of the path of the storm, affecting operations at the Naval Station Norfolk, the Navy’s largest base, and Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek, in Virginia Beach. Commanders on Tuesday moved the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and the Comfort hospital ship out to sea, according to navy officials. On Monday, the Navy had shifted about 30 ships offshore.

The hurricane could be the strongest to hit the Carolinas since Hugo, a deadly Category 4 storm that killed 21 people in the mainland U.S. in 1989. The Carolinas’ population has grown by about five million since then.

The storm has a wide reach, with tropical storm-force winds stretching 175 miles from the center.

With hurricanes, storm surge and inland flooding pose higher risks to life than wind, he said, and Florence is projected to meander over the coast while drawing moisture from the ocean and drenching the region.

In Virginia, a Norfolk
Walmart
parking lot was packed. Many of the store’s shelves were bare. The store had sold out of gas cans and tuna, and the bread supplies were thinning. Shoppers crowded around a worker restocking bottled water.

A satellite image of Hurricane Florence in the Atlantic Ocean, taken Tuesday morning and provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.Photo: NOAA/Associated Press

“I wasn’t scared until I got to this Walmart,” said Halle Hazzard, 24, from Virginia Beach, upon seeing empty shelves. She was stocking up with her friend Shay Gatlin from Portsmouth.

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“Isabel was my worst one and she taught me a lesson: the lesson was always be prepared, never underestimate a hurricane just because it’s not in your zone,” Ms. Gatlin said of the 2003 hurricane.

The port in Norfolk said it would close down at midnight Tuesday night and that docked ships would be asked to leave. Workers planned to secure the giant cranes and bring in “everything loose like cars, tools and ropes is being brought inside” once the port closes, said port spokesman Joe Harris.

“The impact will be small if the closure lasts a couple of days,” Mr. Harris said.

In North Carolina, the ports of Wilmington and Morehead City will close to truck traffic from Thursday to Saturday. In South Carolina, the ports of Charleston, Georgetown and Greer, which handle a combined $63 billion in commerce annually, remain open but are closely monitoring the hurricane.

August and September mark peak hurricane season in the Atlantic basin. Here’s why the conditions in these months make them more likely to form there. Photos: NASA/NOAA

Duke Energy
warned customers in the Carolinas to prepare for widespread outages that could take anywhere from several days to multiple weeks to repair. Duke said it is staging restoration crews from its utilities in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Florida to help restore power.

Electric cooperatives serving four million customers in the Carolinas also prepared for a direct hit. They are coordinating mutual-aid agreements with co-ops in five other states to help restore power, according to an industry group.

Governors in Virginia and the Carolinas, as well as the mayor of Washington, D.C., have declared states of emergency. President Trump has signed emergency declarations for the three states.

State officials said traffic volumes leaving Myrtle Beach, S.C., Tuesday morning were already four to six times higher than normal, and traffic flows heading out of Charleston were three times higher than usual.

Inland in Elizabethtown, N.C., 65-year-old Randy Harris said traffic picked up Tuesday at his restaurant, Melvins’ Hamburgers & Hot Dogs, as people made their way from the coast. He planned to board up the restaurant Wednesday night, but hoped to reopen over the weekend.

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